THE ASSOCIATED PRESS -- EVEN MORE DISGRACEFUL THAN USUAL
Andy McCarthy
The Corner
The Associated Press's account of the passage of Patriot Act re-authorization legislation is shameful, even by AP standards. (It's published in the WSJ this morning.) It includes this classic in biased, Bush-bashing reportage (italics mine):
<<< The vote [approving the Patriot Act in the House] was 280-138, just two more than needed under special rules that required a two-thirds majority. It marked a political victory for Mr. Bush and will allow congressional Republicans facing midterm elections this year to continue touting a tough-on-terror stance. Mr. Bush's approval ratings have suffered in recent months after revelations that he had authorized secret, warrantless wiretapping of Americans.
That issue helped fuel a two-month Senate filibuster that forced the White House to accept some new restrictions on information gathered in terrorism probes. >>>
This is just mind-boggling. Let's leave aside that the AP portrays as a squeaker an issue on which the President prevailed by 142 votes. First, the NSA program has actually helped the President's approval ratings. It is popular with a solid majority of Americans. Where it is unpopular is at the AP ... and the New York Times, CNN, the Democratic National Committee, the ACLU, the academy, Hollywood, etc. -- i.e., the usual suspects. The suggestion that a program to protect American lives has hurt President Bush's standing with Americans can only have come from the epistemological acid trip that is the MSM.
Moreover, the Senate opposition to the Patriot Act long predated revelations about the NSA program. The latter may have given some Democrats the political cover they thought they needed to join -- at least for a couple of months -- the pre-existing cabal that was blocking renewal. But disclosure of the NSA program did not fuel the filibuster. It was the Patriot Act itself that, for example, caused Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid to bray to his base that "we killed the Patriot Act" -- at least before public opinion polls resoundingly demonstrated that Reid and his cohort were, once again, on the wrong side of this key national security issue.
Finally, neither the NSA program nor the anti-Patriot filibuster forced the President to accept any restrictions of significance on Patriot's investigative tools.
On this score, the restrictions listed by the AP are trifles. The reauthorization legislation has long contemplated that recipients of orders demanding information would be able to challenge those orders in court (something DOJ has long maintained is implicit even though not spelled out in the Patriot Act). Thus, the new right to challenge gag orders and to retain counsel without prior government approval are no big deal. And while libraries got some added protection from information demands made by the FBI via national security letter, AP neglect to mention that they got no protection from demands made by the Justice Department via order from the FISA Court.
The passage of the Patriot Act re-authorization is both a great victory for the American people and, singularly, a testament to President Bush's leadership on the signal issue of homeland security -- no matter how the AP tries to spin it.
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